Liaison Forecasts Data Integration Complexity and Customization will Take Center Stage in 2014

Liaison Forecasts Data Integration Complexity and Customization will Take Center Stage in 2014

Cloud-based Integration Provider Makes Top-3 Predictions

ATLANTA, GA – January 06, 2014

Liaison Technologies, a global provider of secure, cloud-based integration and data management services and solutions, today announced its top predictions for business integration in 2014. Founded in 2000 with more than 7,000 customers worldwide, Liaison predicts that in 2014 there will be dramatic growth in data integration complexity, mass customization will become the norm and the convergence of business-to-business (B2B) and application-to-application (A2A) integration will be a top priority.

Based on industry trends, analyst research and its experience, Liaison believes the following trends will quickly take shape in the coming year.

B2B and A2A Integration Become One: By the end of 2014, it’s very possible that the only people still separating B2B and A2A integration as distinct solutions will be software providers. For everyone else, it is now (and will forever be) simply integration. Accelerating this convergence is cloud-based integration, acting as a viable, unifying framework for B2B or A2A requirements. However, despite the outward perception of customers that it’s all just integration, software providers, enterprise application providers and system integrators will have a strong financial incentive to maintain the legacy integration market – a several billion-dollar business supported by large embedded sales, software development and delivery machines. One clear attempt to maintain the status quo is the recently created vocabulary around “private cloud.” From an integration perspective, the term is simply understood as “buy the software and host it yourself,” preserving the software licensing and SI legacy. 2014 will call for the completion of the convergence of integration, and cloud-based integration providers will be asked to no longer discriminate between A2A and B2B.

Growing Complexity as Integration Services Diverge: New APIs, distributed cloud applications and new data types will compound an already challenging technical environment for those struggling to integrate data and systems. As a corollary to growing integration complexity, in 2014 we will see the integration services market bifurcate. Providers will fall into one of two distinct classes of solutions centered on business use case or use case independent offerings based on the underlying technology itself. First, there will be integration providers who optimize their offerings for specific use cases or industries where they are seeking repetitive implementations with low variation between customers. The second type of provider will maintain some advantage in their integration platform, but develop a core competency in delivering a tailored solution to fit each new use case for their customers.

Mass Customization Takes its Place in Cloud Integration: In the 1970s, futurist Alvin Toffler predicted the emergence of mass customization, and in 2014, it is coming to cloud integration. Cloud integration providers will realize they can no longer offer standardized, “cookie cutter” solutions without limiting their market opportunities and risking customer loyalty. The challenge for cloud integration providers is that mass customization is not a technology nor a sales technique; it is an organizational discipline and therefore a difficult change to make. If the growing complexity of data integration in a data centric architecture is the catalyst for a mass customization revival, the fact that customers do not want to choose between two or more sub-optimal options is the bonding agent to make mass customization stick. Today, integration customers are being forced more than ever to choose between less than perfect alternatives; a legacy EDI VAN with a makeover or middleware software that is rigid and costly to maintain. In 2014, mass customization of the cloud integration platform will emerge as an alternative to the compromises and fragmented offerings of prior years.

“Although there remains a large embedded base of integration silos, in 2014 cloud integration service providers, also known as cloud service brokers, will continue to gain momentum as a viable solution for the most straightforward to the most complex integration requirements,” said Bob Renner, CEO and president of Liaison Technologies. “Companies will no longer look for a standard integration solution that focuses on a specific set of data, but rather, will look for how the integration service provider can create the best solution for them.”

About Liaison

Liaison Technologies is a global data management and integration company. It provides innovative solutions to integrate, transform, harmonize, manage and secure critical business data on-premise or in the cloud. With a comprehensive array of business-to-business and application-to-application integration and data transformation services, as well as on-premise and cloud-based data security solutions, Liaison’s practitioners implement data management infrastructures adapted to each client’s specific business requirements. Headquartered in Atlanta, Liaison has offices in the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.liaison.com.

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Liaison and the Liaison logo are trademarks of Liaison Technologies, Inc. All other names or product names mentioned in this release are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

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